5/30/2012

Of Kill Lists, Drones, and Presidents:
Let us say, and why not, that the President of the United States, under the authority vested in him by what his lawyers believe the Constitution and the Supreme Court have said, decided to start a program of targeted robot raping. Yes, whenever the CIA or some other intelligence-gathering agency said it had found a no-good, dirty Moo-slim terrorist, President Barack Obama could order in a fleet of metal men with giant Steely Dan dildos on the front to go in and fuck the shit out of the assholes of anyone so identified, a rape-list, if you will. Let us say, and, indeed, why not, that in order to keep all things equal, anyone who happened to be in close proximity to the presumed terrorist could then also get his or her asshole reamed by robococks. And if it happened that there were children playing in the yard while the filthy terrorist scum and their associates were getting ass raped, the children would get ass raped, too. Because robots don't know. Unless they're programmed for it, they don't understand screaming and pleading and cries of innocence. No, all they know is that there's an asshole that needs to be filled repeatedly with a thrusting steel dong. Would we Americans care? Would we care that Moo-slim kiddies are getting their anuses ripped by our soulless automaton warriors, paid for by our tax dollars, every slam another penny out of your pocket? Would that be enough? Or would it have to be worse? Would the robots have to rape them, tear out their insides, set the whole place on fire, and then piss salt on the ashy ground so that nothing may ever grow again?

See, the Rude Pundit knows that right now he's supposed to be making oh-so-delightful Donald Trump jokes or comparing something Mitt Romney did to that face-eating drug zombie in Miami, but the idea that the President has a list of people that can be killed by drone attacks just sticks in his craw, like a particularly thick phlegm globule that he can't hock up. Sure, sure, the Rude Pundit should be dutifully lining up and defending the policy of the Obama administration. If Obama had said to Congress, "Okay, fuckers, since you're not gonna let me close Gitmo and hold prisoners in the United States, this blood is on your hands," then the whole sending missiles into other countries to bomb a house might have some context, at least.

Without getting all Glenn Greenwald on this (which would be redundant, since Greenwald has already gotten all Greenwald), one aspect of the big story in the New York Times yesterday that is galling is how, essentially, Obama lost his shit after the Underwear Bomber's crotch of caliphate expansion burned up on that plane heading to Detroit. It enraged Obama. "After that, as president, it seemed like he felt in his gut the threat to the United States," says one counterterrorism expert in the article. And the President moved to expand the drone program to Yemen, making it as bomberrific as Pakistan. We expected reason in the face of danger, not Obama hulking out and figuring out how to blow stuff up real good without going into full-on war mode.

Right now, Obama has placed himself and his judgment as the ultimate arbiter of who can and will have the fuck target-bombed out of them, with collateral damage being hidden or written off as guilt-by-association and thus counted as more terrorists killed. The whole program is based on a belief that Obama is doing good, with a list that has included and more than likely still includes American citizens, who, the White House has declared, got their "due process" when people talked about whether or not to kill them.

Forget for a moment the idea that we're just outright murdering people in foreign countries. Forget for a moment that if, say, China decided to send a drone to take out Chen Guangcheng in New York City, we'd be hypocritical pricks for having a problem with that (not that it would stop us). Forget that. The reason to be angry, very angry about the drone program is right there. A unilateral, unchecked power over the life and death of individual, everyday people now rests with the President. And we're supposed to be fine with it because it's Obama, and, boy, trust him because he's so fucking smart. But even if you do, would you trust President Romney to rain robot doom in a rational way? Or President Christie? Or President Jeb Bush? Or some unknown who isn't as smart and good and wise and Nobel Peace Prize-winning as the current kill list decider?